{"id":3217,"date":"2013-08-21T16:15:52","date_gmt":"2013-08-21T21:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/hungerrumblings\/?p=3217"},"modified":"2013-08-21T16:15:52","modified_gmt":"2013-08-21T21:15:52","slug":"our-new-hunger-education-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/our-new-hunger-education-director\/","title":{"rendered":"Our new Hunger Education Director"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/hungerrumblings\/2013\/08\/Ryan.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-3220\" style=\"margin: 8px;border: 2px solid black\" alt=\"Ryan\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/52\/hungerrumblings\/2013\/08\/Ryan-300x219.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"219\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>We&#8217;ve asked Ryan Cumming, new Director for Hunger Education to introduce himself. Welcome Ryan!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I should tell you from the outset that I\u2019m not very good at autobiography. When doing research, we are trained to remove ourselves as much as possible from our writing \u2013 to be objective or detached. Of course, that\u2019s never really the case.\u00a0 It\u2019s not even ideal. Detached work of any kind is passionless work.\u00a0 The most compelling work \u2013 whether it is writing or any other type \u2013 is the work shaped by personal experience, by the story of a person called to it.\u00a0 (On this, I highly recommend the recent book <a href=\"http:\/\/store.fortresspress.com\/store\/product\/17652\/Theologians-in-Their-Own-Words\"><i>Theologians in Their Own Words<\/i> by Derek Nelson, Joshua Moritz, and Ted Peters<\/a>.) As I have begun my new position as Director for Hunger Education<b> <\/b>for ELCA World Hunger, the most interesting part of my job has been listening to the stories of the hard-working, passionate people with whom I work. All of my colleagues bring their experiences, wisdom, and faith to bear on their work for the church, and I am fortunate to count myself among them.\u00a0 Each of us has followed a different path that has led us to work in the church as community organizers, fundraisers, networkers, educators, pastors, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe my story might include the various jobs I have had, from truck driver to factory worker to movie extra to college professor. None of these roles, though, is quite as important as the moment I \u201cdiscovered\u201d faith at Capital University, which might sound odd coming from a lifelong Lutheran involved in church activities since childhood. At \u201cCap,\u201d I saw a faith that was far from comforting.\u00a0 It was challenging, it refused to give all of the answers. This was a faith that accepted tension and that forced me to wrestle with it. It was the faith of St. Augustine, writing his <i>Confessions<\/i>, or Martin Luther making his stand. This Lutheran faith pulls us into a world filled with ambiguity, anguish, suffering, and injustice and tells us, \u201cFind grace. It is here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In my work, it is impossible to ignore the sin that allows millions to suffer and die from lack of food or clean water or medicine. But it is equally impossible to ignore the grace that moves congregations to serve meals, that shapes our public advocacy, that supports new mission starts and global and local initiatives to confront suffering effectively.\u00a0 This work is done by folks with diverse stories, who are drawn together by their faith and their commitment to accompany one another in confronting despair with hope, anguish with relief, marginalization with solidarity, and the reality of sin with the power of grace.\u00a0 I am blessed to be part of our work together, and I look forward to hearing your stories and sharing in the work God does with our hands.<\/p>\n<p><i>Ryan Cumming is the Director of Hunger Education for ELCA World Hunger.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve asked Ryan Cumming, new Director for Hunger Education to introduce himself. Welcome Ryan! I should tell you from the outset that I\u2019m not very good at autobiography. When doing research, we are trained to remove ourselves as much as possible from our writing \u2013 to be objective or detached. Of course, that\u2019s never really [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":194,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-post"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Our new Hunger Education Director - ELCA World Hunger<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.elca.org\/worldhunger\/our-new-hunger-education-director\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our new Hunger Education Director - ELCA World Hunger\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We&#8217;ve asked Ryan Cumming, new Director for Hunger Education to introduce himself. Welcome Ryan! I should tell you from the outset that I\u2019m not very good at autobiography. When doing research, we are trained to remove ourselves as much as possible from our writing \u2013 to be objective or detached. 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